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| I could make 20 muffins in one go, with this trick |
Don't you sometimes wish you had Mary Poppin's magical tapestry carpet bag?
If I did have such a magical bag, I could reach deep and pull out the assorted necessities for life's conundrums. Lacking the magical nanny's tricks, I have resorted to my own contrivances, solving a few of those head-scratching household puzzles.
A question for you -- how many cups does your muffin tin have? Mine has 12. In fact, I have 3 muffin tins, each with 12 cups. Now, how many muffins does your favorite muffin recipe yield? My favorite recipes all seem to yield between 15 and 18 muffins. Hmmmph!
I have a few choices, when baking more than just 12 muffins in a spell. I can move the oven racks, so that one rack is 1/3 up from the bottom, and the other rack is 1/3 down from the top of the oven. Bake my muffins in two tins, at the same time, but swapping places halfway through baking, so that neither batch top-burns or bottom-burns.
I can leave my one rack in its current position and bake 12 muffins, remove from oven, then bake the remaining muffins.
Or, I can do this -- contrive my own 20-cup muffin tin from 2 separate muffin tins.
Most of the time, I just need enough cups for 15 to 18 muffins. I fill one muffin tin, completely (12 muffins). In the second tin, I leave a strip of 4 empty cups, then fill the middle section of 4 cups, and any I might need in the far strip of 4 cups.
Once filled with batter, I place the partially filled muffin tin to the left of the oven rack.
And I place the completely-filled muffin tin to the right side, but with 4 of the filled cups sitting directly in 4 of the empty cups of the partially filled tin. Does that make sense?
I can now bake up to 20 muffins in one go, with no swapping of tins to ensure even browning. I save time and electricity by baking the muffins in this manner.
What's that saying? Necessity is the mother of invention. Or is it this? Where there's a will, there's a way.
We're all a creative bunch, here. What sort of contrivances have you managed, to solve a household conundrum?
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